Most mass notification technologies send the same message to everyone, regardless of their role, responsibilities, location, or involvement in a critical situation by means of a large-scale telephone call out to pre-determined contact lists. These initial notifications include and usually start with 911 calls or official notifications to regulatory agencies if the situation requires it. An increasing number of notification systems provide two-way telephone communication with feedback loops, short response messages, and conference bridging to facilitate teamwork. City website also exists to keep information flowing from official sources to help residents respond to all types of emergencies.
Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) have become the leaders in persistent surveillance over the past several years for federal and state agencies (e.g., U.S. Military, FBI, local and state police, U.S. Forest Service, U.S. Border Patrol, etc). Private commercial applications are also feasible and foreseeable (e.g., large private land holdings or leased open space, environmental and geographical data gathering, university research). UAVs have the distinctive capability of providing better-than-human, aerial, visual information to ground units that may not have the time or means to use a manned plane for their surveillance/reconnaissance. The RQ-11 Raven, for example, is a man-packable, hand-launched, unit-controlled UAV that is used primarily by Air Force Special Operations Command (AFSOC) to easily scout ahead without unnecessary risk to personnel or risk of detection. The RQ-11 Raven, however, has a short dwell time (e.g., the total time of operation in air) limited data acquisition capabilities (e.g., restricted camera and sensor payload). More robust UAVs are larger, require more sophisticated launch systems, can operate for longer durations of time, and can carry an array of sensors and communications capabilities.
A ground control operator can remotely fly and control an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), also known as a pilotless drone. Land- and maritime-based vehicles are similarly controlled. These unmanned vehicles are equipped with camera equipment and are best known for capturing real-time images during warfare, but now these drones have become increasingly affordable for use in civilian high risk incidents such as search missions, border security, wildfire and oil spill detection, police tracking, weather monitoring, and natural disasters. During its mission, the airborne drone acquires image data from the camera and flight parameters from onboard systems. The aerial footage captured by the camera onboard the UAV is transmitted to the Ground Control Station which transfers it to their work station for analysis and possible enhancement. A frame grabber digitizes image data and transfers it to a Host PC and multiple embedded processor boards to achieve real time image processing. UAV software can be used in the playback of the flight video image and data captured by the unmanned mission in a form of DVD connected to the embedded vision system. Such a system typically processes the images using Image processing application software in the form a GUI menu, which displays input and processed images for analysis.
The size of the image to be processed by remote sensing end users is typically 20-40 Mbytes per spectral band. Digital image processing involves the implementation of computer algorithms aimed to fulfill several tasks in acquisition, management, and enhancement and processing of images in digital format. Thus, with the widespread development of computer technology, it has become the subject of many useful computer applications.
Land based unmanned vehicles can also be utilized to collect data. Like UAVs, ULVs (unmanned land vehicles) are operated at a distance by wireless remote control. A remote operator manages most operations, while data collection can occur automatically with onboard sensors and cameras.
Despite the increasing rollout of unmanned vehicles (air and land), their use and data collection is generally restricted to government users and for government activity. Some data that is collected by these modern resources can, however, provide important, life-saving information to civilians. The present inventors believe that some collected data can be chosen for real-time public release to assist civilians at times of state or national emergency. Many current examples are in the press on a regular basis where additional data could have assisted civilians faced with emergency situations. For example, during the 2011 Las Conchas Fire near Los Alamos, N. Mex., a number of New Mexico citizens living near the fire had to form a telephone circle to keep up with the latest and that they were still angry because this form of “old school media” was too slow and not specific enough. These New Mexico citizens complained how the Internet was falling short of its potential, and because of this, they needed to check and recheck many sources to keep up to date and that another downer was that these sources turned out to be updating information intermittently. Those monitoring the fire praised Facebook and Twitter feeds for keeping them informed on their friends, but said that the Los Alamos County Government had very little information on its fire-related site. The Las Conchas Fire 2011 Wildfire in New Mexico burned more than 150,000 acres, threatening Los Alamos National Laboratory and the town of Los Alamos. After five days of burning, it became the largest wildfire in New Mexico's state history.
Currently, existing emergency services continue to operate solely within their own limited spheres with no sourcing real-time drone images for the rapid integration of such intelligence within the architecture of their emergency system. None of these mass notification services are deploying up-to-the-minute UAV aerial imagery to automatically notify the public in real-time via transmission to public recipient computers, portable devices, and smartphones, and with a secondary purpose of providing the notified recipients with the ability to engage others by retransmitting received messages along with their own typed notations so as to be able to communicate continually in an ongoing and multilingual manner, thus forming their own real-time Civic Communications Hub for ongoing situational awareness and providing age-appropriate advice to family and friends, according to the ongoing dangers of the situation being faced.
Most mass notification technologies send the same message to everyone, regardless of their role, responsibilities, location, or involvement in a critical situation by means of a large-scale telephone call out to a pre-determined contact lists. These initial notifications include and usually start with 911 calls or official notifications to regulatory agencies, if the situation requires it. An increasing number of notification systems provide two-way telephone communication with feedback loops, short response messages, and conference bridging to facilitate teamwork. City websites also exist to keep information flowing from official sources and to help residents respond to all types of emergencies. But none of these services are contributing real-time drone images as an alternative means of spreading critical information to the endangered public as quickly as possible.
Based on the foregoing, there is clearly a growing civilian need fir improved emergency applications by providing citizens with selected unmanned vehicle images through push notifications via a data communications network such as the Internet, and that are not dependent on an aging public switched telephone network (PTSN), which is known to fail during certain crisis. A push notification can arrive in a manner comprised of separate technologies such as cellular/Internet voice (voice to text, voice recognition), video stills (embedded with personalized iconographic identifiers), and can further include the capability of a secondary purpose of allowing notified recipients to engage others by retransmitting the message received, along with their own typed notations, so as to create their own real-time civil communications hub for ongoing situational awareness (a system that currently doesn't exist, but can be achievable by software applications running on servers). Once software is in place within a system (e.g., including servers), the only major expense can be largely limited to yearly system maintenance and data management.